Self-traded vs Managed vs Automated Trading

If you have been "around" over the last couple of years you will know that there's been a frenzy over "investment" schemes and scams alike!

Some of these schemes or scams appear in the guise of new multi-level companies selling sugar-coated gold-layered schemes and concepts that promise potentially astronomical returns with virtually no work done by the "investor" and even more out-of-this-world, never-before-seen income potentials. These scammers typically do not last more than a year and a half or just quite long enough for most investors to recover their investments for that is not their intention at all.

Others are disguised as Forex consultancy firms and introducing brokers offering forex account management services and charge a "commission" for every trade they execute on your behalf! Usually you will need to open a live trading account from USD10,000 upwards with a specific Forex dealer who in turns deduct the introducing broker's commission from your account with every trade! They usually promise a 20-50% monthly return on investment depending the size of your investment. The bigger the size of your trading account or investment naturally the bigger the size of your ROI, or so they promise. Of course, once your money is in your live account the profitability of your account depends on the outcome of each trade entered into while for the brokers who manage your account makes a commission on every trade entered into regardless.

Well, enough about scams and what not and managed accounts for now. Lets talk about the advantages and disadvantages of self-traded accounts versus automated trading accounts or trading with FX robots/expert advisors.

When you self-trade you have more control over the amount of investment and risk you would want to subject yourself to in each trade. The only problem is that depends a whole lot on your level of experience as well as your level of success thus far in trading. And even then, there is no guarantee that you would be able to do just that all of the time. The trick then is to be able to do it most of the time.

And perhaps the answer to that would be to engage a forex robot for automated trading. The risks are definitely very real, letting a robot manage your funds online while sleep, eat, work and go about your daily life. However, with calculated risks and informed choices, you can make the best of the right forex robots by putting to risk a limited amount of funds in your forex account and let the robots go to work. After, all depending on what your appetite level is, a limited amount of money is all you need to get started on a forex account at various levels - mini, micro and standard lots.

If you are willing to risk USD5000 for example, you may choose to have 5 different accounts of USD1000 each using different robots trading at mini lots. Everytime you se your money doubling, or tripling, make a withdrawal so that your initial capital is back in your pockets. This way you get to test the reliability of different robots and/or their settings, if any as well as limit your financial risks while opening a whole new world of possibilities in terms of your investment returns.

This is definitely a better route to take than going through the frustrations of playing on your own with limited resources experiencing an emotional rollercoaster everytime the market moves. Don't you agree?